Anthropological Perspectives on Physical Appearance and Body Image

Abstract

Anthropology has long engaged the study of human appearance and body image in all of its major subfields (cultural, physical or biological, linguistic, and archaeological), though cultural anthropology has been most engaged in these areas. Research in cultural anthropology uses ethnography to investigate in-depth insider understandings of human appearance and body image. While objective measures may be included in ethnographic research, gaining a subjective understanding of local cultural context is emphasized. In this way, anthropologists have sought to understand and communicate about a cross-cultural diversity of human behaviors and beliefs related to human appearance and its adornment and modification as well as body image and its pathology. Two contemporary trends in the study of human appearance and body image are bringing anthropologists and psychologists closer together in research. First, as current psychological study of human appearance and body image becomes more interested in working with groups different from those with whom standardized measures were created (e.g., cross-cultural research, ethnic and racial minority groups, and younger children), anthropological methods and theories are increasingly useful to psychologists. Second, as more anthropologists in this field are engaged with questions of global health, psychological measures that show cross-cultural validity are being engaged by anthropologists for better comparison and reliability. Thus, the engagement of anthropological and psychological methods and theories is a useful direction of the field.